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Monday, October 12, 2009

I heart Carbonite

I use an online computer backup service called Carbonite. I have subscribed to them for about 2 years now, for $50/year. They backup all your files offsite so you can restore them if you accidentally delete them or your computer crashes.

As we know, my computer had a meltdown recently. When I got it back from the computer geek I was happy to see I didn't need to reload iTunes. It opened and all my songs and playlists were there.

Or, so it would seem.

Yesterday I finally spent some time reloading programs onto the newly wiped computer, and when I was done I figured I better plug in my iPhone/iPods and get them synched with some music I'm considering for the wedding. That is when I found all of my files were actually gone. The song lists were still there, but when you clicked on a song to play it, suddenly iTunes decided the song was not actually there. First it told me there were 100 problems. Then 300. Then I realized iTunes was not being truthful with me and every single file was gone.

I went to the Apple help desk and I tried every single suggestion they had for restoring my files, and NOTHING WORKED. I was very dismayed because I had lost 2000 files, and of those, over 300 were digital purchases only. (I didn't realize how much money I spend on iTunes before now.)

I could not remember if Carbonite backed up music files, but I checked anyway out of desperation. Well, they do! And I got them all back! And all my iPhone apps! And it was easy!!